


Burning Alive

by killugami



Category: Promare, Promare (2019)
Genre: Cute, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Galo x Lio, Gay, Lio x Galo, M/M, romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 19:24:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killugami/pseuds/killugami
Summary: Lio finally goes on a fire rescue mission with Galo after coming to terms with the fact that typical fires aren't alive...or so Galo thinks.





	Burning Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh yes, the blessed Promare has come to the US. I've watched it three times, so if you're wondering why it keeps selling out, I'm why. Anyway, a little blurb I wrote in the context of post-movie, so spoilers are afoot. Not very long--enjoy!

Galo felt stupider than usual--he should've known this would have happened. Lio had been relatively well-behaved recently, with helping around the fire station and volunteering to help fix up some of the damaged buildings. He still earned looks of scorn and distaste from people of all backgrounds, Burnish or not--he had destroyed the city, and that was that. It wasn't as much malice as Kray had gotten for his crimes against all of humanity, but he would be lying if he said it hadn't at least slightly bothered him. Of course, Lio was homeless and found himself purposeless without the Promare to fight for, so he seemed to float behind the scenes of the rescue team even when Galo introduced him to normal activities like not setting buildings on fire and instead playing a card game or two. Maybe instead of being put in prison they could go out to the movies, or instead of making due with withered clothes from the trash they could just walk into a store and buy some. It was hard getting him to adjust, but the worst part he had to adjust to was the fact that he was no longer Burnish. He was equal, but he wasn't Burnish. No matter what, it felt like he had lost--they hadn't actually learned to coexist or stand side by side without prejudice, they just....disappeared. He should have felt happy; he told the others he was glad, but... he wasn't. Deep down, he wasn't. He had nothing to fight for anymore, all who used to be his allies were now blurred in with his enemies. He couldn't tell who could relate to him and who would hate him. Burnish no longer existing was a double edged flaming sword, and he didn't know which side burned more. He wanted them back, in a way... He wanted to feel something again.

  
And Galo felt moronic for not knowing that. Lio never wanted to go on firefighting missions for obvious reasons, and now that he had accepted, he was genuinely excited that he was finally starting to turn around. They had rescued everyone out of the scorching house they were dealing with this time around, and were working on getting the flames under control, but Lio was nowhere in sight.

"Where the hell is Lio?" Galo demanded Lucia when he made it back to the fire truck amidst the chaos.

"I thought he was with you," she replied, clearly puzzled. She tapped away on her tacky computer buttons and looked into the blue screens before her. She adjusted her goggles with poise and smirked at him too casually for his liking. "Also, are you sure you rescued everyone? It looks like someone is still in there." He blinked in shock.

"What? I swear we....oh, son of a...!" He bolted off before he could even tell Lucia his revelation and scrambled out of the truck. Since this was a civilian home, he couldn't rely on his Matoi armor to bear the flames without collateral damage, so he sported a regular fire suit for the job. The others had already dealt with the rescued family, and were rather alarmed when he bolted past them into the blackened building once more.

"Hey! What are you doing?!" Varys shouted over the roar of the flames, but his words would reach high heaven before they ever reached Galo's ears.

  
Galo scanned the house quickly, turning on his human heat sensors to try and detect the last life in the residence. "LIO!!!" he shouted as loud as he could and darted through into the kitchen. No sign. Not in the living room, not anywhere. He finally looked up, and found that he was on the second floor...but the staircase was giving out. Not that it mattered, he stomped up the crumbling wooden stairs without a second thought. He gasped when his foot caught onto the railing and tripped him, causing him to slam onto the floor. He winced hard feeling a splinter spear through his clothes and into his arm, but he forced himself up anyway. The floor gave a menacing creak and started to crack, but he ran towards the bedroom where the pixelated green outline of Lio's shape resided. From the looks of it, he was sunken to the floor on his knees and staring upward. 'That idiot! He doesn't even have gear--he'll get himself killed!' he thought and pushed open the door. Or, at least he tried. The knob was searing hot and wouldn't budge, which was unlikely for a burning door...unless something was blocking it.

  
"LIO!!! OPEN THE DOOR!!!" he practically screamed and wrestled the knob with all of his strength. No answer. Lio didn't even turn his head on the radar. "DAMMIT LIO!!! I'M supposed to be the idiot, NOT you!!!" The firefighter steered himself to break the door by backing up a few paces. The floor cried out in agony, and fell apart when he charged for the door. He crashed right through it, knocking it off of its hinges and crashing flat on his face on a burnt rug. He didn't allow himself to feel the pain of the splinter in his arm dig deeper, and instead stood up to face Lio.

  
It was almost beautiful, really, seeing his silhouette amidst the flame and smoke. Like a swan cruising a lake of fire at night, majestic and graceful, yet inevitably doomed. Galo rushed past him to open the window first to at least get all of the smoke out. "Lio, come on!" he hissed and tried to grab his arm, but with the smoke starting to pour outside, he could see Lio's face. It was charred not only with soot, but an inexplainable pain. As more cleared, it was clear he was covered in burns, and his clothes were being eaten at by flames. Yet he just sat there, motionless.

"Lio! Snap out of it!" Galo hissed and pushed himself to go forward and grab his shoulders. But when he did, Lio let out a cry of pain that startled even him. "Lio--!"

"Leave me ALONE, Galo," he snapped and wrung himself out of the bluenette's grasp. "Leave me...alone."

  
"You're going to die," he responded flatly.

  
"To die by fire would be a blessing."

  
"You probably won't die from the fire--Your lungs are already probably blackened from sitting in here. And look at you! I can't just sit here and watch you get covered in burns! Doesn't that hurt?"

  
Lio flinched at the question and let his eyes linger towards the orange flames licking at the walls and floor around them. The beautiful flames, now untamable and out of his reach. Uncontrollable and disobedient. Maybe, if he really tried...

  
He hissed in pain again when Galo grabbed his shirt and easily tore it off. "Look at this! It's literally on fire! You're telling me you can't feel that?!"  
Really, he just wanted to snap some sense into Lio, but started to feel a guilty bubble rise into his throat seeing Lio tear up a little bit.

  
"It's not...supposed to..." the boy whispered and slowly lifted his face to meet Galo's once fierce but now sympathetic eyes. "It shouldn't hurt...! I...I can't just leave...!"

  
"Lio..." he whispered and watched the tears fall down his friend's face, and the way he desperately tried to catch them to prevent them from extinguishing even part of the blaze.

"I want them back, I-I...I can't live like this, these fires...! What if they feel pain too...? What if the pain I'm feeling is what they're feeling as they're being put out...?"

"Lio, that's all behind us. Before Burnish, there were fires, after Burnish, there's still fires. We have to get out of here," Galo murmured apologetically and hefted the boy up despite his strained wail. The house rumbled threateningly upon feeling the two moving, and the roof began to cave.

  
"Galo, we have to stay!" Lio barely managed to say through his tears, and even tried to kick away from Galo, but he was causing himself more spikes of pain in the process.

"Stop it! We're going out the window, you're gonna hurt yourself!"

"This is nothing compared to what I've been through!"

  
"It sure doesn't seem like it! I'm jumping on three!" He took a few steps back and braced himself.

  
"Wait--!"

  
"THREE!"

  
He sprinted right for the window and leaped out a bit dramatically even though it was already open. Down below, Remi who was working on the extinguishing process did not quite expect it to be raining men, but that's precisely what he got. "GAH!!!" Upon collision, Lio immediately tried to go back inside, but Galo grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back.

  
"Lio, you're acting PSYCHO!" He turned back to Remi achingly rubbing his head and processing what just happened. "Rem, put it out! Tell the others it's okay to go full blast now!" "NO!! You're hurting it!!" Lio insisted and wiped his eyes, but he kept flinching at his own burns. Now that he was outside in the sun, he could see the glistening red blemishes that had eaten away at his skin. The damaged tissue and peeling flesh, all unsightly and something he had never experienced before. Why did it hurt? Why did it hurt so much, more than anything else? Really, it hurt more emotionally that it ever could physically. Like the fire had betrayed him, like the Promare itself had betrayed him. It wasn't fair that they couldn't all just live together in peace, that they had to go away instead of holding hands on the journey to living together and teaching humanity acceptance. They could have stopped the magma like Galo had said, they could have done something else completely. It was Galo's fault, it was his own fault for helping him, it was the parallel universe's fault for having this happen to him in the first place. All the Burnish before him that had died in vain trying to secure peace, it was all for nothing. They died for no one because no one of their kind existed anymore. Extinct, they were all just extinct, and now people would only treat them nicely because they mistook them for one of their own. All of the ashes of his people that were cradled by the wind and put to bed in better places would never sleep well. He failed everyone, dead and alive. He failed. He failed. He failed--

  
He screeched like a cat when Galo started pouring ice cold water on him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he whimpered, and was indeed clearly deeply apologetic for what he was doing. In the time Lio was trapped in the cage of his mind, the house was extinguished, the others had celebrated, and he was now in the medical wing back at the station getting properly treated. This required cold water, which was not exactly one of Lio's favorite things. "STOP!!" Lio snapped and held his hand out to conjure a solid flame to push Galo back, but without the actual flame it looked pretty stupid. Galo stared at his hand...then snickered a little and put the bucket aside. "Ow, you really got me," he teased and pulled out the gauze from the medical bin to treat the wounds.

  
The medical wing was simple, a square room with three stiff hospital beds with side tables and IVs, and a curtain cut between each of them for privacy. They were by the window so Galo could actually tell what he was doing, and so Lio had something else to look at besides his face when he started to treat him. But now, Lio was only staring at his suspended hand. It hurt, it hurt a lot. So he put it down and clenched a fist. How much could it possibly hurt? He grit his teeth and dug his fingernails into his palm, trying to go to the extremes. If he could bear it, he could use fire again, it was that easy, right?

  
"Why did you do something so stupid, Lio?" Galo asked straight up and sat on the edge of the bed. He wasn't really one to beat around the bush, even if tears were beading in Lio's eyes. The boy didn't respond and only looked away. "I told you already. I'M the stupid one, not you." His words lowered to a quieter, more personal tone. "Talk to me."

"Why should I? You would never understand," Lio sneered haughtily and refused to even glance in his direction. "You were never a Burnish, and now no one ever will be."

  
"I thought you were happy? No more discrimination, no more living in a cave off of canned food, no more fighting the government for freedom..."

  
"See? You wouldn't understand...at least not how I feel."

  
"Do you miss your powers?"

  
Judging by the way Lio flinched, he knew he hit the nail on the head.  
"Listen, I'd miss my powers too. I do! Trust me..." His voice trailed off into a realm of sadness Lio had only heard once before. "I mean, now without the Burnish, I don't really have a reason to use my Matoi gear...soon, the department will probably shut down due to lack of fires. There won't be so many, and Freeze Force will just handle anything that comes up since they have the bigger, better technology, you know?..." He sat back a bit and actually seemed a little embarrassed. "You know, I'm the only one who can pilot that Matoi. Feels great, and like I'm doing something awesome and special, because I know I am! But to not really be that special anymore, to no longer be needed..." He sighed with heavy resentment. "It...it hurts."

  
Lio didn't believe Galo when he said he didn't understand, but now? His eyes were glowing with hot tears, ones he refused to let fall. He kept his eyes fixed on the lazy clouds no matter what, even if they reminded him of the clouds of smoke from earlier, or of the ashes loved ones dancing on the wind to this day.

  
"But you know what Lio? I don't regret getting rid of all of the Burnish," Galo concluded with a bright grin, one which soon got a fist right in the center of his teeth.

"Shut UP! See?! You don't get it!!" Lio roared and threw his hospital pillow at him. "You don't get it at all! I failed everyone--we didn't win! Even when we don't exist, the Burnish lose! We're not equal, we're all the same! You can't be equal if everyone is exactly the same!! Equal means two different parts functioning together, but now that it's just one, the 'BETTER' one, we're all just, we're just...!"

  
There was something about Galo's stare that stopped him. He hadn't recoiled or anything when he punched him, he stayed right there sitting up, his blue eyes as comfortingly searing as ever and his smile still plastered across his face. It unnerved him a bit, and that might've been what made him silent, but he knew that wasn't it.

  
"If you would let me finish," Galo began and cleared his throat. "What I'm trying to say, is without the Burnish, that doesn't mean we're equal or not equal, or that we're all the same. I can't even believe you think we're all the same. You don't have to be Burnish to be special...for someone who doesn't want to be defined by being Burnish, you sure are attached to being it, aren't you?"

  
"I'm not attached, I'm proud," Lio corrected bitterly.

  
"Exactly! And now that you're not Burnish....you can be proud of being yourself, the real you that you've been wanting everyone to see under those flames for so long!" His grin grew brighter, like a candle in the darkness of Lio's mind. "You're Lio Fotia, not Burnish. You have so much in you, so much to give, so much more than just some weirdo alien flames that possess you and what not. You can finally put those worries to rest and actually shine. You don't need powers to be special--all you need to be special is to be yourself." His smile softened and he picked up the gauze again. "Okay?..."

  
Lio hated that Galo was right, and hated the fact that it made him tear up, and hated that he was moved, and hated how he knew that it was those words he would cling onto when in times of doubt. He felt something inside, something that wasn't the Promare, something that was possibly better expanding in his chest. It was warm, but it wasn't constricting like tears. It was gentle and content, like a litter of kittens were sleeping in his heart, purring and melting his chambers with their little vibrations. His eyes were looking at Galo, but Galo looked like...well, what he really was. Strong, caring, gallant and forgiving. Also a bit bruised on the cheek, but otherwise...he looked cute. Meeting his eyes struck a match in him, like his whole body sparked to life with a whole different kind of fire he couldn't see, and one he definitely couldn't control. He found himself looking back out the window again...smiling slightly this time.

  
"You're not as dumb as you look," he chuckled more or less to himself, but Galo laughed anyway.

  
"I get that a lot. Well, not really," he replied and started wrapping him up in medical ribbon again.

"Right...thanks."

  
They sat in comfortable silence while Galo worked to fix the burns that Lio would live with as a reminder, a collection of scars he promised not to add to again. Those days were behind him, and he just had to live his new life where the fire stayed inside but showed through his actions. It would he a hard journey, but he was ready to trudge on. He wasn't alone, after all.

  
"Hey, Lio?" Galo spoke in almost a whisper and didn't look up.

  
"Yeah?" Lio didn't look either.

  
"...No more crying about this stuff, okay?"

"...Alright."

  
There was a bit of tentative silence.

  
"Promise?"

  
Lio finally turned, and was beaming back at him.

  
"I promise."


End file.
